


Hide Your Fires

by Fascinated



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Demonlock, Gen, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:53:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fascinated/pseuds/Fascinated
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After cornering a criminal in a back alley, John sees something strange and terrifying in his flatmate.  Something he never could have predicted.  And now neither he nor Sherlock know quite what to do.  A Demonlock AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "To every hour, its mystery"

**Author's Note:**

> Prompted by QuinnAnderson because I needed inspiration. This is my first shot at a longer fic. By all means, let me know what you think. Concrit is welcome, but please be polite.
> 
> Many thanks to my beta, Shmoopie313, and my britpicker, QuinnAnderson. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Title is from "Macbeth", Act I Scene 4

Goddammit, none of this sounds right.  None of this explains what I saw that night, how he _changed_ in the space of a breath.  There was a gunshot, blood on the walls of a filthy London alley, and a serial killer taken down after a two-week rampage.  Business as usual.  Except for Sherlock.  Sherlock, who always brushed off danger and death like it was nothing but all of a sudden couldn’t look away. 

I thought something was wrong, so I tried to get his attention, bring him back to reality.  “Sherlock?  Hey, you with us?”  I nudged his shoulder, shook him.  No response.  Then I looked in his eyes.

They were black.  Not shadowed from the dim streetlight, but _black._ Like all the light had been sucked out of them.  His breathing was ragged and uneven, and his expression unstrung and fixated.  If I didn’t know better I would have sworn he was aroused instead of winded. 

“Sherlock!”  He started and suddenly he was back again.  “Are you ok?  You seemed a bit out of it for a minute there.”

“I’m fine.  Call Lestrade, he’ll want to know what happened.”  He turned and shouldered past me out of the alley, and suddenly everything was back to normal.  I shook off the lingering memory of his face and the terrible focus I’d seen and chalked it up to stress from the adrenaline high.  Our part in this was over, and all of a sudden I was exhausted.  I answered a few of the standard questions from Lestrade and managed to stumble home before crashing on the sofa back home.  Once or twice I woke up and thought I heard Sherlock playing.  But the music was strange, wild and discordant and longing. 

In the morning I laughed at my own runaway imagination.  Blackened eyes and otherworldly violin?  I needed a holiday.  But I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.

Fast forward to present day.  We’ve not had a case since the serial killer and the back alley shooting.  Sherlock was back to his typical infuriating norm, and I’d almost forgotten about what I thought I’d seen.  It was business as usual at Baker Street.  Or nearly so, at any rate.

It might be time to confess something: I am outrageously attracted to my flatmate.  All those snide comments from others, and those assumptions about the nature of our relationship?  The rumours that I keep denying?  They’re all true.  Or at least I wish they were all true.  No, I’m not gay.  I’m just utterly enamoured of the brilliant, beautiful lunatic who waltzed into my life and saved me from myself.  So I guess what happened next shouldn’t have surprised me at all.

I’d gone out with some mates for a drink, just to get out of the house.  One drink turned into eight, and by the time I got home my head was swimming, and I was properly intoxicated.  I managed to get up the stairs and into the flat with every intention of taking some aspirin and going to bed, until I heard the music.

It was Sherlock, and he was playing that weird, aching song I thought I’d hallucinated months ago.  Seems it wasn’t my imagination after all.  Suddenly I was frozen.  Couldn’t do anything but watch him while all the wanting and denial I’d felt for the past year choked me, and I thought I’d drown just standing there.  I didn’t even realise I’d moved until I was next to him, and he’d stopped playing.

When he opened his eyes it was the alley all over again.  Except this time those pitch black eyes and inhuman lust were focused on me.  Some primal instinct screamed at me to run, but I couldn’t move.  I stood there and stared back and wanted him more than ever.  When he grabbed my shoulders and forced me into the wall I should have been terrified.  I wasn’t, though.  At least not until he snarled, and I saw his teeth: jagged like a shark’s and coated in an oily black film. 

I’ve faced death so many times I’ve lost count.  Hell, facing death is what brought Sherlock and me together in the first place.  I’ve never shied away from danger.  But the sight of those empty black eyes and inhuman teeth in my best friend’s face terrified me down to the core of my being.  It wasn’t death in those eyes, it was endless pain and lust and _hunger._   Sherlock’s hunger would devour me and I knew if it did it would last an eternity.  He wrenched my head back, leaned in to my throat…and suddenly reeled back like he’d been punched.  He turned away and stood with his back to me, gasping like a drowning man. 

“Jesus.  What the hell was that?  What the hell are _you_?”  He didn’t respond and took a few steps forward like he was about to walk out the door.  But I was damned if I was going to let this one go.  This was more than fingers in the fridge or thumbs in the press.  “Sherlock!  Goddammit, Sherlock, STOP.” I forced my way past him to block the door.  “You don’t get to just walk away from this and pretend it never happened.  What the fuck was that?”

I don’t know what kind of response I was expecting, but the sudden bark of cynical laughter caught me by surprise. 

“What the fuck was that?  What the fuck do you _think_ it was, John?  What the fuck do you think I am?  You’re not stupid, so I’ll let you work it out.  Here’s a hint: I am the prodigal, but my Father would not welcome me home.”

And with that he brushed me aside like I was a child and stormed out the flat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from a quote by Clive Barker


	2. "My black and deep desires"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock's self-control is exquisite. But he's been caught off-guard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is Sherlock's POV, and Sherlock is notoriously melodramatic. I can't imagine that being an eternity old would have made him any less so.
> 
> Title is from Macbeth: Act 1, Scene 4

_“Oh God, why hast thou forsaken me?”_

_Laughable words.  God never forsook his creations.  We turned from Him, reveled in flesh instead of the Ineffable Light.  I fell because I tasted sin and found it sweeter than my Father’s love.  Centuries passed while I lost myself in all the pleasures of mortal senses, with no one the wiser.  I thought myself untouchable, and grew careless.  I suppose it was inevitable that I finally slip.  I suppose it was fitting that blood was my undoing._

_Breathless chase through London’s slums and into a blind alley.  Shots fired, and a killer’s lifeblood spilled.  I don’t know why I was caught unprepared, but somehow the scent of tainted blood worked its way down my throat and I was undone._

_When mortals write about “unholy lust” they have no real concept of what that means.  True lust, demon lust, tears you apart from the inside out.  Takes over your senses and drives you to depths the human mind can’t even imagine.  To surrender would be ecstasy and agony in perfect measure.  I would tear the world apart to lose myself in it.   And the world would never be enough.  For just a brief moment I didn’t care._

_He saw, I know he did.  My doctor, my dull as dishwater human who is my link to the mortal world.  I saw the fear in his eyes and forced myself back down.  But I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up.  Especially not now, now that_ he’s _here.  Because for all that John is a killer, he is also a healer.  And that makes him an innocent.  At first his innocence grounded me, helped me focus and deny my true self.  But lately I find myself wanting to possess that innocence, consume and control him and make him mine.  Denial is not in my nature.  So when the opportunity presented itself, I took it._

_He’d gone out earlier and I thought he’d be gone all night, either with his friends or with whatever female he’d met at the pub and decided to share a bed with for an evening.  So I relaxed the stranglehold I had on my nature and poured out my longing into my music.  I was lost and unguarded, and that was when he came home._

_I never heard the door open, or his feet on the stairs.  I never heard him come into the flat or notice his presence until he was so close I could smell him.  And so I didn’t have time to replace my carefully constructed illusion before our eyes met and I was lost for a second time.  I wasn’t aware of what I was doing until the violin was out of my hands and John was pinned to the wall.  The veneer of humanity fell away and the hunger I’d suppressed for a century came screaming back, demanding satiation, demanding blood and souls and the life of those I loved best.  And it was almost the end of me.  I tasted the salt on his skin, rancid with fear, and every cell in my body lit up in anticipation.  I’d needed this for an eternity and finally, finally it was mine again._

_But suddenly I just couldn’t.  I felt bile in my throat and I froze in the brief second before I spilt that gentle blood.  Without conscious thought I threw myself back and away from him, turned so I couldn’t see the fear and betrayal on his face any more.  Forced down the demon rage and replaced the skinmask I’d kept on for so long.  I had to get out, get away, get control.  I couldn’t stay in that flat for a second more.  But John dogged my steps, demanded answers I knew he couldn’t handle._

_“I am the prodigal, but my Father would not welcome me home.”_

_Let him make of that what he would.  I left.  I hunted._

 

_What happened after, in the darkness of London, is best left to the streets.  Suffice it to say I slaked my thirst._


End file.
